I Hate Kids, like I love'em......

Children are so overrated.

There is an unspoken taboo in our society where if you admit that having kids wasn’t quite what you thought it would be and that if you could do it all over again that you would have chosen NOT to have kids, that you are a monster, an evil, despicable monster.

The truth is a large percentage of parents HATE being parents (DIBS on how many parents are secretly banging their heads on their monitors, right now). They will never say it out loud and they can’t even admit that to themselves because “only an selfish, evil demon” would come to that conclusion, they think.

For every precious moment where the little brat does something special, there are 1,000 moments where they drive you crazy.

They literally tear your life upside down. Marriage, your social life, the list goes on and on and on.
Oh yeah, the worst part is yet to come – the teenage years.

The reason people have children is because of this unwritten societal norm where the standard is to get married and immediately begin to produce offspring like a vending machine on a cocaine trip; because “that’s the thing to do”.

I think most people end up having kids because 1) They’re too stupid to know how to use birth control properly 2) There is a severe shortage of electricity in the night and there is nothing for a couple to do except maybe ‘Do it’ and/or 3) They have an idealistic, completely unrealistic vision of what parenthood entails.

It's gonna be like this, only a LOT more terrible....

People imagine dressing their daughter in pretty clothes, or playing catch with their son. They don’t think about being awoken at 2 a.m. by a sick, screaming kid who just threw up all over the bed, and who doesn’t give a fuck that you have to get up for work in four hours. They don’t think about the mortgage company threatening to foreclose, or the electricity being shut off, because the husband can’t pay all the bills on one income.

More people should think about these things, and fewer people should be having children. Parenthood should be left to those few couples who are willing to take the good with the bad along with a hefty bank balance that ensures the poor baby does not have to end up facing the ultimate humiliation of the father looking dead into his/her eyes sixteen years from the day they were born and being told: “I wish I had wasted you in the bathroom, you, you sick fuck!!”.

Seriously, the way I see it people just do not understand the working and the finer nuances of being a family in a society that has continuously been flipping you the bird since the day you are born. Most of the people I know have married – not because they were ready to – but because they could not handle the emotional distress of having to give the neighbor’s a detailed account as to why their upset dad climbed up the chimney wearing only a diaper and screaming “Dude, get married!!! NOW!!”  I know a lot of guys who tie the knot precisely because they are manipulative emotionally and who just don’t have the kind of balls required to stand up and give a glowing account of why it would be so terrible to get married at that time and how much the poor ‘perfect match’ is going to suffer because of being forced into a marriage. I mean, the world is already over-populated with every imaginable abomination Satan ever imagined. So, it’s not like the human race is threatened to extinction and only your marriage and spawn can save it.

There is a problem with the society we live in. Yes, by ‘we’; I meant all of us. The Indian society is a unique and exquisite example of something so balls-shiveringly complex that it has been flipping the bird at anyone so minutely unfortunate to being a part of it. Not to poke holes into the very society that is fully responsible for churning out another maniac cynic (that would be me, D’oh…..) but in a way you look at it, the whole setup looks diabolical. On one hand, is the temptation to sin to such an extent that the Devil himself would wish for a vacation and on the other hand is the perverted need to keep up a charming face that the society can at least bear with. 

By the time you reach your late 20’s or 30’s or whenever it is that you wish to marry (Why would you want to do that?) you have been completely mind fucked by the duality of existence and ass wiping (If you’re working in a corporate), that marriage and a life time permit to ‘hot’ sex looks like something that you just need to bite into. Never mind that the guy has a huge loan on the loan he took to buy a car because his huge house taken on a loan felt like the Eden Garden Cricket ground. Holy shit, I never thought I’d live to write a sentence like that, but anyway; you get the idea?

Marriage and kids are not a poor man’s game. Buying stuff and ensuring to provide 2 square meals a day while your credit reliability slowly sinks deeper into a black hole; is not love. You are just providing for your family, if you cannot even do that comfortably; you have no business of even marrying in the first place. And, in an economy like India, that is saying a lot. So, coming back to the point of kids – there is a rule that you need to know – if you have spent half of your working years desperately trying to make ends meet while making it look like you are comfortably numb in the society, you know for sure that all those jealous people out there are already rubbing their hands and wetting themselves in anticipation of the colossal fuck-up that you are going to make of your life – all for the simple reason that you let somebody else decide when you would need a warm bed. And let’s all face it. Once the first step is done, the rest of the way is a clusterfuck of carnal needs and 2 minutes of pleasure, because you know; Oh Come on! – Which is gonna last for at least the next 25 years of your life? Go ahead; take a moment to let that sink in while I wait for you….

Seriously, It looks a lot better this way....

And all through those 25 years you are going to crib and curse and swear (and if you are lucky; choke everyone responsible) about how no one told you this was so tough. Oh and while you live the rest of your life a walking, farting, swearing imbecile, the kid that you decided to go in for is freaking out at the utter insanity of life, slowly turning into everything you don’t want him/her to be. Then one fine day, those kids will have kids of their own who will in turn flip a couple of more birds at everything around them. Yep, it’s a vicious cycle….

Damn!! And you thought programming that pesky check so your client can go and whack off in sheer satisfaction was tough? 

Who the Fuck' am I?!?

So, I was watching this video on YouTube (The great Indian Wedding). This video is about some bride who is a perfectionist and about why she rejected 1000 grooms before she decided that one guy is a right one. But this post is not about her (besides the point that I think she is one of those confused Indian girls who couldn’t differentiate between strength and arrogance). But, one point she talked about made me think how that notion is so stupid. She says, and these are her words, ” Career defines me completely, My identity in todays world is because of what I am.” A lot of people wrongly define their identity as their career. I can totally relate to it, because it's one of the most fucked up notions people stubbornly live by here. Don't believe me? Okay, but when it happens to you, I will be right here with a disgusting scowl that says "Ha! Told'cha so!!".
 
Go and attend a family function. This is why I never socialize with relatives. The first and second questions almost all the guests ask you are “What are you doing now” and “How much do you earn”. What the effing fuck do you mean what am I doing now ? Don’cha see? I am enjoying my paneer dhokla, ya schmuck!. Oh, do you mean how I make money ? You don’t know how much now I hate question. I don’t even understand why these folks are so curious about how I make money. Why do they care? I most likely will never be seeing their sorry faces unless another family function comes along. So I later on learned not to talk about my job at all! (Believe me, try explaining to a bunch of ignorant fucks who are already drooling over the cash wad you pull in at the end of the month, about Clinical Research). Let me rephrase your question and answer that. I enjoy my life and if you would be kindly obliging, I wish to get done with your stoooopid question and enjoy my life some more. That’s what I did and that’s what I am doing now and that’s what I would do for the rest of my life. I started talking about how I enjoy my life and sometimes explaining why their life sucks! Sure, I’ve pissed them off - precisely my point!  

From a very  early age we are trained to answer questions about ourselves to associate their career with identity. Questions like “what do you want to become when you grow up” make every child get into that same disguising loop of thought that career is the one identity they should be focusing on!

I love to travel. I love music. I love converting a plain ass piece of paper into a tangled mass of psychedelic colors. I love playing on my guitar. I love to read and maybe, write. None of them have been my careers (but surely had an impact on how I, see and do things). So, if somebody is interested in knowing about me, should'nt they be asking “Who are you” “What do you like”? Nope. They ask me what do I do! What The Fuck do you mean what do I do? I've changed like 25 jobs, so on that definition, I changed my identity 25 times in my life .. I have been a waiter, I have been a bar-tender, a Disc Jokey, a event manager, a tele-sales representative, a junkie (Wait....... What!?? Never mind that). None of them could be my identity (except, maybe the junkie part. I' am still figuring that out). Sure, I made my money from them depending on how desperately I wanted to impress that cute chick with fake boobs. And sometimes I did nothing. So, does that mean I don’t have an identity ? Now, that I am making money (even if it's pathetic), you suddenly became interested in who I am.

I think this is why home-makers get so little value. People who make less money get so little value. If you are running a family means you have skills. If you do garbage, that doesn’t mean its your identity. Probably you can sing, or do graffiti, or jerk off for 10 straight days while listening to nu-metal. I dont know what drives you... But, there lies your identity. I' am not saying that just because I sit in a cold ass cubicle all day and you pick garbage for a living, you suddenly need to be interested in me. No. What I do want to say is, you could be the best painter around for miles and yet you may still end up picking garbage for a living (Yeah, seriously this garbage thing is kinda getting creepy) and yet it is only a matter of time and effort before people start seeing through a week's garbage before they finally realize what you really are. Sometimes you have to walk a few miles in the cold to reach a zone where people know you for what you are worth. But it’s there. You can find it, or you can make it. And when you find it, or make it, or break it.... I only pray that you be yourself; not just your job.

Jaded?

There is a certain irony to early love being naive, foolish and instantaneous. There is also a great deal of good reason  in our parents wanting us to settle down early with the right person, its easier to give your heart away when you've haven't spent a long time collecting life experiences and along with it, emotional baggage.

When I look around me, at the friends I have and the environment I live in, and the one common repetitive theme is that everyone is so jaded, so scarred by some past life experiences that they're holding on tight, to something inside, to themselves lest they let go, that they're passing up on these fantastic people and options that they're being granted.

What happened to the girl I wrote about a few blog posts ago, you may ask. I wrote an exclusive email a few days ago, closing that chapter. She went away and kept me sufficiently 'hooked' so that I'd feel adequately special, but not committed. Regular sms and late nights spent driving the server maintenance guy at Google Talk crazy, denoted interest, but not a promise. I closed that loop recently - I cant be the one who holds on because I cant let go. Sure, I've been pretty knocked up and flattened in my life that justifies me holding on to memories that haunt me, or make me pensive, or make me look like a dumb fuck or all of it, but that did not mean that I was okay with being played around like a mouse.

I met someone else who unexpectedly took my breath away, for a few days before she put a screeching halt to even getting to know each other because she's had a bad past experience. I'm a fantastic guy(retarded, but fantastic), she said - exactly the kind she wants to be seen with(I should have run the day she said that - in the opposite direction). BUT she's too scarred, too afraid to give her heart away again.

I'm SO tired of being exactly the kind of sweet guy, every girl wants, or that fantastic guy that EVERYONE lets get away. I'm tired of hearing the 'It's not you, its me' story. I'm tired of meeting insecure girls who have no fucking clue about what they are going through. I'm tired of sharing myself, and tired of learning to get over moments.

Do we all do this I wonder? Do we let go of things sitting right under our noses? When I think of all the women I've turned down for one reason or the other, I wonder how unhappy I would have truly been had I ended up saying yes to any of them.. I suspect not very. Guess I was just chasing a fairy tale, wanting to fill in a missing space, wanting to get into someone's pants, or add another note to the rhythm.. think what I'm looking for may not exist. So let me restate, and re-evaluate and see if its asking for too much.

A WOMAN [not a HOT girl] who is ambitious and passionate about life and other things, who will love me and my flaws as I will hers, a woman who can be a girl and ride rollercoasters with me and be a child with me, a woman who will know what to do when I'm falling apart to pieces and in whose silent presence (Don't fuss too much when I'm upset - it's a freaking phase and it'll pass) I feel encouraged and comforted in. A woman who is respected by others and who respects others.. A woman who can talk about life and love and the economy and business, someone I will look upto. A woman with a bucket list, a woman who has seen a lot of guys to rejoice and respect a good catch, a woman with love to give and a life to share.

Too much?......... Fuck!....... Please, just pass me my needle...

Kutti.